It’s finally here – the first trailer for our movie, Will Reading! I am pumped up about it! We’ve made a ton of progress on the flick; we still have a bit to go, but we’re certainly past the halfway mark.

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3 points on Oblivion (movie review)

There’s something about this trailer that didn’t inspire me to see Oblivion in the theater. (Given its visual quality, I wish I had!) It looks like your run of the mill last man on earth sorta thing, but there’s a bit more to it than that – as the trailer shows you. After watching the flick, I found that it wasn’t what I was expecting, but the movie still comes up short. Here are 3 points on Oblivion.

This movie is about what now?
While the movie itself is not confusing, the way it’s explained isn’t always especially clear. You’ll get it eventually (as the movie gives you multiple chances to get caught up – more on that in a second), but that doesn’t make it any more interesting. In fact, it just makes the story frustrating. Meaning, the delivery of the mystery aspect of the plot is self defeating.

Oblivion is too long
At 124 minutes, Oblivion isn’t Lord of the Rings too long, but it’s redundant nature makes it feel longer than the actual running time. They must repeat that dream Tom Cruise’s character has a million times… The dream is important, I get it! When Cruise’s Jack (what is it with Tom Cruise playing characters named Jack?) isn’t talking about the dream, the movie is showing us the dream – and it’s good to show us things because film is a visual medium, but it’s not necessary to show us the same thing a million times. Then there’s the action tropes – as we get deep into the first act, I think the film makers decided that nothing exciting had happened for a while, so we get this chase scene that’s twice as long as it needs to be. There was an excellent opportunity to cut it off as per the setup with the lighting earlier in the movie, but they tacked on another several minutes that we didn’t need.
The movie is full of stuff like this and it only extends the running time instead of enhancing the story.

SPOILERS AHEAD!

One piece of throwaway dialogue would have made a better movie
Morgan Freeman’s character mentions that the ground invasion force was made up of thousands of Tom Cruise clones. How awesome would that have been to see? I’d rather have seen a movie about astronauts who get taken prisoner, get cloned, their clones are sent to earth to take over, and then the original break free and fight back, take control of half of the clones, the clones fight each other… the back story to Oblivion has the potential to be a way more interesting movie than the flick itself.

Dr. Girlfriend liked Oblivion more than I did (I think she’s scoring it somewhere between 7 and 8) – I didn’t hate it, but it just doesn’t live up to its potential. I’m giving it a 6.9 out of 10.